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Here are the presenters for the first day of the 2017 Lorne Trottier public science symposium series, Mind Matters: The Body-Mind Connection.

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Monday, October 23, 2017

Symposium, 7:00 —9:00pm, Centre Mont Royal, 1000 Sherbrooke Street West (corner Mansfield)

Dr. Marla Shapiro, C.M.: "Work Life Balance... Mind over Body"

What does it take to achieve work life balance? For those of us struggling among an ever-changing environment, the answer may lie in our ability to be resilient. This lecture will look at these concepts with the presenter, Dr. Shapiro, sharing her own unique experience as a physician and cancer thriver in the daily quest to find balance.

Biography: Dr. Shapiro completed medical school at ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ University and trained at the University of Toronto for her Masters of Health Science. She concluded her specialty training in Community Medicine, receiving her Fellowship in Preventive Medicine and Public Health from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. She also holds a Fellowship in Family Medicine and is currently a Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.

Dr. Shapiro is seen on CTV NewsChannel and is the medical consultant on CTV's National News. She appears on special assignment for W5, was the host of Balance: Television for Living Well and Dr. Marla and Friends, and writes a weekly blog for CTV. She is the founding editor of Parents Canada, also writing the regular "Ask Dr. Marla" column, and is the author of the bestselling book, Life in the Balance: My Journey with Breast Cancer.

Dr. Shapiro received an Award of Excellence from the College of Family Physicians of Canada, and was awarded the Excellence in Creative Professional Activity by the University of Toronto. She is also the winner of the 2010 May Cohen Award and the 2010 Peter R. Newman Humanitarian Award. She was honored as a Woman of Action by the Israeli Cancer Research Foundation. In 2015, Dr. Shapiro was chosen in the top 10 of the 50 most powerful doctors in Canada by the Medical Post, and in that same year, was also named a Member of the Order of Canada for her contributions as a family physician and trusted source of health information.

Dr. Amir Raz: "The Placebo Effect"

Placebos are tricky and powerful. Why do red placebos stimulate whereas blue placebos calm? Why do more placebos work better than few? And why do more expensive placebos work better than cheaper ones? These are some of the key questions that often come to mind when we consider the slippery and counterintuitive field of placebo science. Rather than consider placebos through the narrow lens of "sugar pills" in clinical trials, Professor Raz shows how psychosocial parameters — including rapport, historical and contemporary context, expectation, empathy, hope, conditioning, symbolic thinking, and suggestion — play a role in forming placebo responses and placebo effects.

Biography: Professor Amir Raz, Canada Research Chair in the Faculty of Medicine at ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ University, Canada, is a world leader in unlocking the brain substrates of attention and consciousness. Dr. Raz is Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology & Neurosurgery, and Psychology; Senior Investigator in the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research of the Jewish General Hospital; and a member of the Montreal Neurological Institute. He heads both the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ University and the Clinical Neuroscience and Applied Cognition Laboratory at the Institute for Community and Family Psychiatry. Former member of the ¿´Æ¬ÊÓƵ Board of Governors and Editor-in-Chief of a specialty peer-reviewed journal, Professor Raz combines cutting-edge science and trailblazing research with community outreach, science teaching, and interdisciplinary education in the health and psychological sciences. With peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, The Lancet, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Professor Raz has received multiple accolades, ranging from a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression and the American Psychological Association's Early Career Award, to Fellow of the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis and Honorary Fellow of the Golden Key Society. His research interests span the neural and psychological substrates of attention, suggestion, placebos, and self-regulation. A former magician and musician, he also conducts research into the cognitive neuroscience of deception, ownership, altered consciousness, and atypical cognition. Using imaging of the living human brain, genetics, and other techniques, his research brings together basic and clinical science.